He Who Drowned the World : the epic sequel to the Sunday Times bestselling historical fantasy She Who Became the Sun

A few weeks ago I went to a book fair and walked past a booth that advertised a book series as ”norm breaking.” It made me incredibly curious and I started to ask about the books and what exactly they did to break norms. The woman told me about the strong woman who didn’t need a man to save her ( but still had a romance with one ) and that later books had queer side characters. To me, that didn’t sound norm breaking at all since that's essentially what Barbie did in her animated movies. When I got home I asked my friends about books they found norm breaking and we did come up with a few ( ‘the roots of chaos’ and ‘The locked tomb’ series are two examples). For me, one of the books was of course also ‘She who became the sun’ and I decided it was finally time to reread it and then read ‘He who drowned the world’ after pushing it up until I felt ready to really dive in. I read them both with the words norm brensing in mind and I knew the review would be a bit longer than usual but HWDTW is a book that truly deserves it. —– First of all, I want to talk about how wonderfully the book handles identity. The way Shelley describes the character gender, sexuality and conflicts between it feels so incredibly special. All the pov characters are unique and distinct in how they perceive themselves and how that affects their outlook at life and each other. Zhus journey to become comfortable with being born a woman and transcending it feels so special. Especially in relation to ouyang who is perceived to be of the same status as a woman, making him hate anything and everything feminine to the point of denying himself his own sexuality. They are each other's foils and everything they do parallels so well in the story. I also love the security Baoxiang has in his own sexuality despite what Everyone else thinks. I think it's a nice addition to zhu & ouyang and their struggles. I also love the way Ma & Madame zhang are very different versions of feminine women. I think they too add such nice layers to the already many parallels one could draw between each and every character we get a POV from. —– I think HWDTW handled heavy topics incredibly well. It never felt vulgar or unnecessary. Every sad and awful thing had a purpose for story and/or character development and I do think that's how heavy topics *should* be used in books. It never felt like a cheap way to produce shock value nor for the book to be seen as edgy. I also think it's worth mentioning how funny this book is. I often see people recommend them with warnings of them being dark and heavy and while they do have those moments there is just as much joy in them. It's something I wish people advertised more since I don’t want people to be too scared to read this duology. There were multiple moments I had to stop reading because I laughed too hard. While Zhu is a very determined person, She’s also rather silly in the most endearing way. Her interactions with ouyang were especially enjoyable but I also adore the way she teases Ma. I also found being in Baoxiang head added a lot of humor. His many thoughts and assumptions about what others thought about him made me lose it more than once ( especially early Baoxiang/Ma interactions. Baoxiang my delulu king ) —– I also adored that one big theme in the book was love and hope. How Love can change the tides in your favor no matter how hopeless something seems. How wonderful it is to be loved and be changed by love. Having the book end on a hopeful note *because* of love after everything that happened leading up to it honestly made me cry my eyes out. Zhu would never have gotten to where she is if it wasn’t for love. She had to learn how to love and how to *understand* it. I was incredibly worried about how the book would end. This series could so easily have fallen into tropes that would make the endings Incredibly unsatisfying but it manages to not only avoid all of them but also give us one of the most beautiful endings a story like this can have. I give that all to Shelleys understanding of love in such a beautiful and complex way. —– I do think HWDTW did manage to break not only norms but also my expectations. It explored its theme’s with such care and balanced heavy topics and humor with grace. I can honestly only hope and pray I find a book that moves me like this again because its just such a rare gem.

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